It's crucial that modern marketers embrace technology in today’s digital landscape. Marketing automation is one piece of tech that has become fundamental to boosting both productivity and overall business efficiency. An Invesp study into automation found that the technology can increase sales by 14.5% and reduced marketing overheads by 12.2%.

Here are 5 benefits of marketing automation:

It frees up your week

Gone are the days when you would commit hours to content scheduling or workforce management; an Entrepreneur study found that automation tools can save up to 80% of the time spent on those two tasks alone. Furthermore, automating social media tasks could save more than 6 hours per week. That is time that can be better spent on more meaningful tasks, like strategic planning and problem-solving.

Read more: How do professional services marketers succeed using marketing automation?

It maximises return on investment

When you use a powerful tool that integrates a CRM system with marketing automation, you’ll find all your sales and marketing activities available in a single centralised space. You’ll know the retention value that comes from good customer relationships, by automating lead nurturing activities you’ll be able to develop and build those relationships, thus achieving maximum ROI without increasing your work output.

It gives you insight into customer behaviour

Automation allows you to collect valuable data from a vast number of sources, meaning you have plenty of information to gain a real and deep understanding of your customers. Email automation, for example, lets you track open rates, responses, click-through rates and even allows you to A/B subject lines and layouts to tell you which got the most engagement. Those insights will help you tweak your approach in order to maximise conversions. The more you optimise, the better your marketing will perform.

It helps you be more consistent

To maintain effective customer engagement, it’s crucial to be consistent. Getting the right message to the right audience at the right time and through the right channel can significantly increase the chances of conversions, and of retention. Marketing automation helps you achieve this by allowing you to create strategies at every stage of the customer journey. Once you achieve an ideal consistency with your messaging, you’ll find it easier to predict and allocate future marketing spend.

Read more: How future growth will be driven by your customers

It scales up personalised customer experiences

Years ago this would have seemed like a pipe dream: delivering personalised experiences to customers without having to go through each on a case by case basis. But marketing automation enables you to build and automatically distribute messages that resonate with the unique needs of every customer based on their behaviour. With greater targeted messaging, you’ll increase the chances of conversion, whether as a new lead or as a retained, long-term customer.

Businesses will always want more leads, improved conversions and increased retention while generating greater revenue. Marketing automation significantly helps you achieve those goals and level up your marketing.